>>5447829 (PB)
Wonder if any of those shooters attended Jeffrey Bronfman's ayahuasca church?
On Feb. 21, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the small New Mexico-based sect of the Brazilian O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal church to continue its sacramental use of the hallucinogenic ayahuasca tea. In a unanimous ruling, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, the court concludes that the government's interest in enforcing the Controlled Substances Act is not sufficient to infringe on the UDV's religious freedom.
In 1998, federal narcos raided the UDV's Santa Fe church and seized 30 gallons of the sacramental ayahuasca tea – brewed from two plants found in the Amazonian basin – claiming the church's possession and use of the brew was a violation of the CSA because it contains diemethyltryptamine, or DMT, which is a prohibited Schedule I narcotic. The head of the UDV's U.S. branch, Seagram's whiskey heir Jeffrey Bronfman, cried foul and filed suit in federal court seeking an injunction that would leash the narcos and restore the church's right to use the tea. He argued that the UDV's ayahuasca use is protected under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, enacted by Congress, in part, to exempt Native American religious use of peyote from the CSA ban. Under RFRA, the government is barred from "substantially burdening" a sincere religious exercise, unless the feds can demonstrate that the burden is the least restrictive means of advancing a compelling government interest. In this case, the government argued that its compelling interest is keeping intact the drug prohibitions defined by the CSA. But, given that peyote use by thousands of Native Americans hasn't undermined the CSA, the UDV argued that eliminating an essential component of their religious practice in order to enforce the ban on ayahuasca was an overwhelming burden, and thus a clear violation of RFRA.
https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2006-03-10/346279/